Our Story

Dellwood Capital Partners LP was founded by Serge and Peter Milman in 2009.  Serge and Peter immigrated to the US as children, from communist Russia in the late 1970’s.  Their parents worked all sorts of jobs to put food on the table and make sure the kids went to school.

Growing up in NYC, the brothers were fiercely competitive in sports and video games.  Serge’s dream was always to work on Wall Street and battle other traders like modern day gladiators.  After graduating NYU Stern School of Business, a traditional Wall Street job at one of the big banks was out of reach unless Serge went on to get an MBA.  His grades were good but not perfect like most of his graduating peers.

The year was 1995 and technology was quickly moving into the markets.  Around this time, a new tech was developed allowing small investors to trade electronically against the incumbent market makers.  The tech was called SOES and the small investor finally had an edge.

In 1998, after trading for just one year, Serge had made over $800k and was featured prominently on the cover of Forbes Magazine.  He became self-employed in 1998 and has never looked back.

Serge began hiring other traders and teaching them his skillset.  His brother Peter was one of the very first and best hires.  Peter quickly showed his proficiency in identifying repeatable patterns and decisively acting on them.  

In 2000, the brothers became equals and launched Ronin Asset Management - a proprietary trading firm.

At its peak, Ronin employed 72 full time traders with offices in NY, Boulder, Miami and Austin.  But change is constant and the market evolved away from fractions to decimalization and away from SOES trading to HFT algo trading.

The brothers adapted and adjusted their trading style but most traders could not pivot away from real time trading to portfolio management.

Ronin was wound down in 2008, and in 2009 the Milman brothers, for the first time in their careers took in outside capital to launch Dellwood Capital Partners.

Dellwood quickly grew, hitting a peak AUM of $100m in 2011.  At the time, Dellwood was a long-short TMT fund.  We bought volatility in a HIGHLY volatile market.  The fund returned over 45% in 2009 and over 50% in 2010.

But as vol dried up, and the market eked higher and higher, the Fund underperformed the slow moving market.  Our short book hurt us and our returns suffered.  While the fund never lost money, in slim years where the market was up 3-7% (2011-2015), the Fund either broke even or was up a few percent.

In 2015, five investors remained in the Fund. Serge approached each one and explained the plan going forward:

• We would pivot from actively managed to more of a passive style.

• We would shift from long-short to long bias tech.

• Serge, at his own risk, would start investing HIS OWN PERSONAL CAPITAL in credit opportunities via his vast network of friends and colleagues

• Serge, at his own risk, would start investing HIS OWN PERSONAL CAPITAL in venture tech opportunities via his vast network of friends and colleagues

By 2017, Serge had invested in over 12 credit deals (mostly publicly traded sub $250M market cap companies seeking op-ex capital) and 16 venture tech investments.

In 2017, Serge had incorporated private credit into Dellwood.

Since 2017, Dellwood has returned over 150% cumulatively and the portfolio today is balance at 60% public markets and 40% private credit.

And now we launch Dellwood 2.0 with this very same model.  If you would like more info, please fill out our form below.